Unneeded Startup Items, These are unneeded Options

[Marcus]

Sure, what's the question? I'm leaving to meet a friend now, but I'll be back later and will try to answer your question then .

I think I was editing my question when you responded before I'd finished, exile.

[exile360]

Group Policy should have nothing to do with this, neither should WMPNSCONFIG.

I do notice though when I right-click on the Realtek HD Audio Manager icon in the system tray and click on Volume Control it opens the Volume Mixer and testing the WMP sound volume set at any value (even 100%) gives nothing - no sound at all while testing "Speakers" and "Windows Sounds" both give the correct "Ding" sound at the relevant volume.

No sound at all when testing, do you mean no sound coming from the HD Audio Manager? If so, then it's possible you need to change your default sound device to the Realtek HD Audio device. As for the Windows Media Player "ding", I've never noticed it because I never clear the cache that way since CCleaner does it.

[Marcus]

Group Policy should have nothing to do with this, neither should WMPNSCONFIG.No sound at all when testing, do you mean no sound coming from the HD Audio Manager? If so, then it's possible you need to change your default sound device to the Realtek HD Audio device. As for the Windows Media Player "ding", I've never noticed it because I never clear the cache that way since CCleaner does it.

Thanks for your patience in reading and offering advice about this; if you mean enabling Realtek's HD digital output and making it the default audio device I tried that earlier and it didn't make any difference. No sound at any volume on testing. For the time being I've given up. Might come back to it sometime later when patience returns and irritation vanishes.

[exile360]

No, not the digital output, the analogue, that's the one you should be using unless you've got a speaker system hooked up to your optical output. You could simply reverse the WMPNSCONFIG settings changes you made previously to re-enable it and see if the "ding" returns. If it does, then there's the answer, if not, then it's something else.

[Marcus]

Done what you said - made sure Realtek was set to analogue and made the default. Makes no difference at all. Incidentally I don't get any sound when MBAM completes updating either. I do all updates of everything manually; in fact I don't get any bleeps at all any time from any program that updates. Never mind, it's not the end of the world.

Thanks again. exile, help and interest always appreciated.

[exile360]

No problem .

Have you checked in the sound settings for the "ding" to make sure it plays there (it has an option when you click on a system sound to play it to see what it will sound like)? It could simply be that the path is messed up somehow or something happened to the .wav file that's supposed to be there.

[Marcus]

exile, you've been a most patient help, i don't know what to say anymore. "Thank you" typed out seems inadequate somehow to me.

The sounds themselves all bleep with their respective short "tunes" when tested in Sound/sounds

I'm beginning to wonder whether I've mistakenly removed a registry key(s) / value(s) which may have accounted for this? I am prone to an occasional fiddle in there and I suspect it's one of those occasions when I've been in there recently on a sort of read about one, think you can do one, you really think it applies one, venture in there once again and bugger it up again type of learning expedition.

Know what I mean type-of-thing?

Gonna sit on my hands for a while - not gonna venture in there for at least five minutes!

[exile360]

You're very welcome .

Yes, messing around in the registry is how I learned about it . After a certain number of reformats (don't recall exactly how many, but there were a lot ) I started to backup any key I was going to alter by exporting it from the registry first. A tool such as ERUNT is handy for such situations, as is System Restore .